Well, the “have Patrick sleep in Alex’s room” experiment got called off after only two nights. Patrick caught a cold and didn’t sleep very well, so we brought him back into our room. We’ll probably try it again soon, maybe Patrick decides he’s ready to sleep longer at a stretch.

On the plus side, Alex hasn’t slept in his crib for nearly two weeks. There were a couple of times recently when we put him to bed when he was crabby and he asked to sleep in his crib, but he’s still wound up sleeping in his bed each night and each naptime. So I now think we’re officially ended the crib era for him. Now it’s just a matter of getting everybody in the house adjusted to Patrick sleeping in a different room.

The weather this past week has been quite lovely, sunny and cool. I think all of us who live in the Northwest get this funny feeling in September and October: Each sunny day may be your last, so you cherish each one. Last Sunday, when the sun came out in the afternoon, we took advantage of the nice weather and took Alex to the arboretum to feed the ducks.

For the most part, Alex had a great time. Every now and then the ducks would get a little too aggressive to get the food, which would scare him. I must admit, when I was surrounded by a few dozen ducks, I felt intimidated, too. So I can’t really blame Alex.

The week itself was uneventful. Friday, we took Alex to the playground. He gave me a ride on the merry-go-round. “I push you, Daddy,” he said.

This weekend, I learned a valuable lesson. If you take a couple of kids, put them in nice clothes, make sure they don’t have food smeared over their faces, and have good lighting, it’s nearly impossible to take a bad picture. I have 139 good pictures from Saturday morning. I’ll show you just two of them here. (There are two more in Flickr.)

Now, as I write this, it’s 12:05 AM Monday morning, and Patrick’s decided he wants to be wide awake, and Molly’s decided I get to watch over him. Hopefully this isn’t the start of a “nocturnal baby” phase. Anyway, I better stop typing as I have to start parenting…

Someone kindly pointed out to me today that I haven’t posted any new pictures this week. So, here’s your weekly dose of baby cuteness:

Molly took this picture today. As you can see, Patrick now holds his head up like a champ. This is pretty new for him. What’s also unique is he doesn’t really look like Alex in this picture.

Speaking of Alex, it’s been an eventful week for him, too. The biggest change for him is he’s now sleeping at night in his big boy bed. He’s napped in his bed before, but he’s never slept there at night.

It was a contest of wills to get him to sleep in his bed for the first time on Tuesday. After his normal bedtime routine of a bath and a story, I asked him to go sit on his bed. I’ve gotten this far before. And like all of the previous times, after 30 seconds, he started saying in this plaintive tone, “I want my criiiib….”

In the past, I’ve given in at this point. He’s just so happy in his crib. And him being happy and quiet at nighttime makes me happy, too. So in the past, I’ve always taken the lazy route, carried him to his crib, and then enjoyed a quiet evening.

I don’t know what made me decide that this was going to be the week that things would change. Whatever the reason, I was determined on Tuesday to sit with him as long as it took for him to fall asleep on his bed. I was not going to cave and carry him to his crib. Much to my surprise, it only took 5-10 minutes before he was ready to fall asleep. And in those 5-10 minutes, he was really chatty. It made me realize how much his language has improved over the past 2-3 weeks. In those few minutes, he told me, “When I get older, I’m going to go to preschool. I’ll play with the big kids. Devon [a kid in his class at daycare] will go to preschool, too.” He talked on and on about preschool.

He eventually decided to stop talking and fall asleep after I kept telling him how much we’d be proud of him when he slept in his big boy bed. I told him we’d call Grandmom in the morning, and she’d say, “Yaay, Alex!!” when we told her he slept in his big boy bed. That story made him happy, and he fell asleep.

So far, he’s slept two full nights in his bed without incident. No falling out of the bed in the middle of the night (he’s done that before while napping and in a hotel – I’ve put his big MGM lion between him and the edge of the bed this week, and maybe that helps). Surprisingly, he doesn’t get out of bed during the night or in the morning. He’s now in the middle of his third night of sleep in his bed. Let’s hope the peaceful trend continues. After all, we could really use that crib now for Patrick…

(A postscript. Alex’s memory surprises me at times. This morning, when I went to get him out of his room, I was conscious to praise him for sleeping in his big boy bed. “Yaay, Alex!!” I told him. He looked at me sternly and said, “Daddy, you’re not Grandmom.” He remembered the story that got him to sleep in the bed two nights earlier.)

Patrick turned three months old today. In spite of the chaos that tends to be our mealtimes these days, Molly managed to take a couple of good pictures of him when I got home and before we started putting Alex to bed. Here’s the three boys:

Things he can do now that he’s three months old:

He coos a lot — much more than Alex did at this age. Or at least more than we remember Alex doing.

He drools while chewing on his hands.

He laughs for mama. I haven’t heard it yet. After laughing, Patrick gets the hiccups. (It was easier to get Alex to laugh. You know, in the picture above, Patrick does look like the serious one.)

We took Alex & Patrick to the aquarium on Sunday. It was a pretty uneventful trip — the only thing noteworthy is the octopus was particularly active that day. Here he is, trying to eat one of the kids.

Saturday, we took the family on the ferry to Bainbridge. Alex had a great time. When you walk to the very front of the boat, you’re hit by a wall of wind when you leave the protection of the vessel’s hull. Alex thought that was the best thing in the world, and he made us carry him back and forth, into and out of the wind.

Alex will now also tell stories, such as they are. He and I were up on the sun deck as the ferry pulled into shore. The ship’s horn blew, suddenly and LOUDLY. It startled us both and Alex started to cry. I took him below and calmed him down. He then said, “The loud horn blew. I was scared. I cried.”

“Go tell Mama,” I said, and we found her and he repeated his story. Hey — it’s got a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Now that we’re home, for the past two days, Alex’s favorite game to play is “ferryboat.” He sits on the chair with one of us, he makes a toot-toot sound like the ferry’s horn, and we get on and off the ferry. Oh, and every now and then one of us pretends to fall into the water and splash around.